Two Indian Bitcoin Exchanges shut down blaming Government

According to the Economic Times in India, Crypto exchanges BTCXIndia and ETHEXIndia have informed their customers via email that they are stopping trading activities.

The exchanges cited the “stress” on their business caused by governmental actions discouraging bitcoin and crypto.

BTCXIndia customers are told they have until March 4, 2018 to withdraw their funds in either Bitcoin(BTC), Ripple (XRP), or the rupee (INR) before an annual wallet maintenance fee is applied. The exchange’s Ripple/INR trading will be halted on March 5.

ETHEXIndia customers are told they had until Feb. 28 to withdraw their funds in rupees or Ethereum (ETH), and that trading will halt today, March 1, 2018. ETHEXIndia is currently ranked 163 in exchanges by 24-hour volume on CoinMarketCap, with a 24 hour volume of around $15,724 by press time.

The companies referred to the Indian government’s budget speech:

“As we heard in the budget speech, the Indian government is discouraging cryptocurrency trading. This has been clear also by government actions in the last year and has put our business under a lot of stress and putting us in a position where we don’t feel that we can continue our business in a professional manner any longer.

Until new rules are in place for tokens on public Blockchains, we are halting our trading (XRP/INR pair) platform and will focus 100% on our consultancy working with permissioned Blockchains.”

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